MetaBlog PhoneReader: What is the question of literature ?

The question of literature cannot be —What is literature?

Since the latter is a question where the interrogative force rests wholly with the —What“ and
where the existence of literature is reduced to the fact that underwrites the analytic task.

To ask —What is literature?“ is to take for granted a by no means incontestable ontology and to range the question of literature along-side other enquiries into the properties and dispositions of determinate beings.

For Blanchot, literature is less a fact than a self-conditioned impossibility. Hence it does not lend itself to the reflective and cognitive question. This holds likewise of philosophy.

Were philosophy to ask itself —What is philosophy?“ as a reflective and cognitive question, it would presuppose the reflective and cognitive character of philosophy and thereby betray phi-
losophy‘s long-standing definition as the interrogation of its own definition.